


a whole lot of history (you and me)

by ladililn



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 5 Things, 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Friends, M/M, Modern Era, Modern Royalty, Oxford
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 11:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9233351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladililn/pseuds/ladililn
Summary: Merlin grows up in Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, so does Arthur.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally--and when I say "originally," I'm talking like 2011 or something--this was a 5+1 fic, with the thing being Merlin running into Arthur accidentally+on purpose. Then it kind of...grew, like cupcake tins filled with way too much batter that spread everywhere and make a huge (if delicious) mess. But you can still see the germ of the original idea in there, if you're wondering why Merlin literally crashes into Arthur so many times in this fic.
> 
> Even though it's taken ~6 years to get here and I'm not exactly sure how many people are still seeking out new Merlin fic in January 2017, I'm glad to have finally finished this. It's a rambling mess that bears the scars of a good half-decade of (hopefully?) improving as a writer, and I'm sure I wouldn't write it this same way again, but I love these two idiots, and it was beginning to feel a bit ridiculous that I didn't have any fic published for possibly my OTPiest OTP of all time. So, anyway, enjoy. Thank you for caring about these stupid boys as much as I do. Do feel free to comment; I can talk Arthur & Merlin anytime, anywhere. ♥
> 
> Also the title is from a One Direction song. I'm not sorry.

i.

Merlin doesn't want to be here.

Yesterday, he did; yesterday he was nearly bouncing off the walls with excitement. He was going to meet the KING. The KING of all of Britain, the man whose face is printed on Merlin's allowance, whose name is stamped across everything from the post office to the morning paper, and he was going to shake Merlin's hand and talk to him. Merlin was going to live in a palace and go to school in London and be best friends with the prince, who’s only a year older.

The problems begin first thing in the morning, when Merlin wakes up at the hotel and it hits him that he really, truly doesn’t live in Ealdor anymore. He already misses it: the sticky buns from the bakery from the street, the little stream where he tried to catch frogs every summer, the way he was allowed to go anywhere he wanted in the village as long as he was back for dinner.

Still: London, palace, prince, KING. That’s what’s important. How many other boys get this sort of life? He’s lucky, really. His mother squeezes his hand (in the LIMO that the QUEEN sent to take them to the PALACE), and Merlin returns her smile. He feels the excitement welling up again, just like when his mother first told him they were moving.

And then he meets Morgana. Who is terrifying.

She’s the daughter of the king, born before he even married the queen, but not technically a princess or in line for the throne for reasons Merlin doesn’t fully understand. The important thing is that she’s nearly eleven years old and thus inherently terrifying, never mind her personality. Except Merlin _does_ mind her personality, because she looks him up and down like she’s making some kind of life-or-death judgment about his character and then offers her hand, which Merlin, nervous and well-versed in Disney movies, kisses, and then she LAUGHS AT HIM.

And so now Merlin is even more nervous and scared and certain that the king and queen are going to hate him, probably so much that they’ll fire his mother from her fantastic new job that she’s so excited for and it will be all Merlin’s fault. (He’s so nervous he can’t even think in capital letters anymore.)

And _then_ Merlin finds out that he won’t get to meet the king at all today. Not the prince either. He’ll only be meeting the queen, and while he’s kind of relieved, because the queen always comes off as nice and friendly and kind, and Uther comes off as even more terrifying than Morgana, he already told all his friends back home that he was going to meet the king and now he’s a liar.

Although, he thinks with a pang, it’s not like he’s ever going to see his friends back home again anyway.

The palace, too, is…not quite what he expected. The outside is all grandeur, of course, starting with the inarguable thrill of having those massive wrought iron and gold gates swing open to let them through. And the garden, where they met Morgana on their way inside, is of a suitably fairytalelike quality. But then a guard—not even one of the ones with the tall fluffy hats!—leads them to a “private entrance,” which sounds fantastically secret and special, but actually opens onto a pretty regular-looking staircase.

Well, Merlin supposes, it is a bit on the posh side. It reminds him of Dr. Simmons’ house back in Ealdor, the kind of place where you have to take off your shoes before you can go inside. But he would have thought that a royal palace would be a whole lot fancier than the house of a village doctor. The hallway that follows the staircase is more of the same, and the next two rooms, too, just seem so _normal_.

The queen is waiting for them in the third room off the second hallway. She stands up, beaming, and opens her arms to hug Merlin’s mother. Merlin tries not to stare, but it’s difficult.

She doesn’t look _real_ to him. He’s seen her face thousands of times, on TV and in the newspaper and on his mother’s computer screen, and now her being _right there_ , a flesh and blood person in front of his very eyes, just seems…impossible. Like if Superman suddenly flew down from the sky for afternoon tea.

The queen turns to him next, gives him a smile even warmer and friendlier than the one she gave his mother, and Merlin forgets to be nervous. He at least remembers not to kiss her hand when she holds it out—they shake instead, which makes him feel very grown up. And then she asks very gently if she can have a hug, which Merlin thinks is nice. Adults rarely ask. So he hugs the Queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms, and he thinks this is much better than meeting the stupid king, anyway.

He does tune them out pretty quickly once they start talking about boring adult stuff, like _how was the journey_ and _you wouldn’t believe what the moving company charged_ and _would you like something to drink_? After a day or two has gone by—at least, that’s what it _feels_ like—the queen says she’ll show them to their “suite,” whatever that is, and they head back out into the hallway.

Merlin’s just glad to be moving again, to be _doing_ something. (His mother sometimes says he has “too much energy,” even for a seven-going-on-eight-year-old.) Unfortunately, they almost immediately run into Gaius, and everybody stops at the top of another boring staircase to have another boring conversation.

Uncle Gaius is the whole reason Merlin’s mother is the queen’s new personal assistant at all. At least, he arranged for the interview, and then the two women took to each other like a pot to the kettle, or whatever the saying is, Merlin isn’t sure. The point is, everybody’s grateful and everybody’s friends and it’s all wonderful, but Merlin is growing a bit cross that nobody’s paid him any attention for nearly an hour now. A seven-and-three-quarters-year-old boy has _needs_ , darn it, and those needs include going down to the stables that Merlin is sure are around here somewhere and seeing if he can wrangle a pony ride.

Finally they say goodbye to Gaius, and then it’s down the stairs and through another hallway and through a door that looks just like a part of the wall, and then—

Merlin gapes.

It’s impossible to take it all in at once. High ceilings with painted-on clouds. Crystal chandeliers. Shiny marble floors. Richly colored fabric-covered walls. Interspersed mirrors and windows on one side of the long gallery; on the other, floor-to-ceiling oil paintings. Everything sparkling, shining, clean.

Okay, so _this_ is a proper castle hallway.

Which, Merlin realizes with a jolt, he is standing in alone.

They must’ve already walked down and turned a corner while he was busy gawking. Left or right he doesn’t know, and it strikes him that this is probably not the place to get lost in, so he breaks into a run.

And then he collides with something very solid and definitely not wall-like that sends him sprawling to the ground.

“Oi!” he hears through ringing ears. “Watch where you're going, will you?”

Merlin looks up. It’s the Prince of Wales.

(Unlike with the queen, he doesn’t doubt Arthur’s reality for a second, because it’s rather hard to deny the existence of someone with whom you’ve just had a head-on collision.)

“Sorry,” he says, scrambling up. “I didn't see—”

“I could have you thrown in the stocks, you know,” the prince says, looking annoyed.

“I didn’t mean to—what are stocks?”

“They’re things kings use to punish peasants and people who annoy them. I could use them on you.”

“I’m not a peasant!”

“Well, you are a British subject, aren’t you? You’re going to be my subject someday.” Arthur looks almost insufferably smug at that.

“Well, I’m not _yet_ ,” Merlin says, still a little indignant about the peasant thing but shifting rapidly into annoyed. “Anyway, I bet you can’t really. Only the prime minister can. You have to be elected.”

“Not to throw people in stocks, you don't.”

Now Arthur is starting to look like the annoyed one, which creates a marvelous opportunity for Merlin to take up the smug position.

“Yes, you do. You don’t have any _real_ power, I learned all about—”

“Merlin!” It’s his mother’s voice. She and the queen appear back around the corner, evidently having noticed he was missing and doubled back. “Goodness, there you are. Don’t lag behind like that, you’ll get lost—oh, wonderful, you’ve met Arthur!” She beams.

“Arthur, where are your manners? Have you introduced yourself?” the queen chides.

Arthur looks annoyed. (Well, okay, he was already annoyed, that’s been established, but now he looks annoyed with a side of embarrassment. Discomfort, even.

Merlin tries not to laugh.)

“I’m Arthur,” the prince grumbles—at least as much as he _can_ grumble in that right proper accent of his—and sticks out his hand. Merlin’s never shaken hands with another kid before. Posh people are weird, he decides. And royals are the poshest of the posh, so they have to be the weirdest.

“I’m Merlin,” Merlin says. Arthur’s lips start to curl into an expression Merlin recognizes at once, one that always immediately precedes someone repeating “ _Merlin_?” in a mockingly disbelieving tone. Retroactively, Merlin decides he quite likes Morgana. Compared to the Prince of Prats, she’s practically a teddy bear.

“You and Merlin are going to be sharing a tutor,” the queen says, before Arthur can say anything.

“What!” Arthur says instead. “Him too?”

“Yes, him too,” the queen says in a tone that firmly establishes there are to be no arguments. “At least for the rest of the school year. He and Hunith are moving into Nimueh’s old suite. Won’t it be nice to have someone your own age living here, to be your friend?”

“I already have friends,” Arthur says mulishly, and Merlin decides then and there that he will never, ever be friends with Arthur Pendragon.

“Well, so do I,” he says—and, remembering that all said friends are back in Ealdor, he adds, “and I’m going to make lots of new ones, too, just you wait. I’m going to have way more friends than you.”

Arthur flares. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

(Somewhere in all this—which goes on for quite a while, since _no, you’re not/yes I am_ is absolutely the most hot button issue-driven debate it’s possible to have at their age—Merlin registers that the queen looks concerned. Hunith just laughs. “Kids,” she says, in that infuriatingly knowing way adults have. “Just when you think you’ve got them figured out.”

The queen sighs. “Too right.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Hunith says, comforting. “They’ll work it out soon enough. By the end of the week they’ll have become the best of friends.”)

 

They don’t become friends.

To be fair, they don’t spend every waking moment at each other’s throats, either. There is a rocky period at the beginning, but that more or less reaches its peak by the end of the first week, when Arthur trips Merlin over muddy ground and Merlin retaliates by pushing Arthur into the garden pond. Despite Ygraine’s concerns, it doesn’t actually escalate from there. Instead they reach a sort of entente, the unspoken terms of which dictate a mutual policy of ignoring.

Which isn’t to say that they’re very _good_ at adhering to those terms.

But at least most of their future interactions are less…explosive. They don’t hate each other, that’s what matters. They coexist. Sometimes, they even get along. Like during the Employee Appreciation holiday dinner, the first one after Hunith and Merlin move in, when Merlin makes Arthur laugh so hard he snorts grape juice out of his nose and stains the nineteenth-century gift-from-the-king-of-Belgium tablecloth. (It’s all Morgana’s fault, really. In the sense that she was being so unbearably smug about Uther allowing her to have a tiny amount of wine that Merlin feels forced to swap her glass with his grape juice. It begins with Arthur trying to hide his snort in a napkin, progresses through Morgana’s increasingly buoyant state of imagined drunkenness, and ends with all three of them being forcibly excused from dinner and sent to their rooms.)

Over the weeks and months and years that follow, Merlin actually develops a healthy respect for Arthur’s pigheadedness, or at least his ability to push and push and push on an issue that matters to him until someone gives in. (That’s how they end up going to Disneyland Paris for Arthur’s tenth birthday.) And Arthur begrudgingly lets Merlin be the first to play all his video games, because Merlin is so much better at it and can help Arthur through the tricky bits. During their tutoring sessions, they automatically form a united front against Structured Learning in all the evil forms it takes, like maths questions and vocabulary tests.

So they have their moments, but they’re still not _friends_. True to his promise—threat, maybe—Merlin finds other friends, kids of other palace employees and of the women in his mother’s knitting circle. Arthur, of course, has his collection of peers’ sons and distant cousins. Merlin’s allowed to have his friends come over if he likes, and Arthur’s little entourage seem to constantly follow him around like a brood of irritating ducklings, but they don’t do a lot of cross-group interaction.

The thing is, living in the same home only means so much when that home is a bazillion square feet, especially given that Arthur and his family regularly disappear for various trips of state. (Well, Arthur’s parents _regularly_ do, at least, and Arthur gets taken along _sometimes_. Merlin gets taken along very seldom, except when the royal household makes one of its big moves to Scotland for months on end. Generally Hunith leaves him with Gaius while she accompanies Ygraine to Malta for the weekend, or whatever. Merlin actually doesn’t mind being left behind so much, especially when Arthur is gone too, because then he gets to feel like he runs the place. Like he’s Eloise, but a boy, and instead of the Plaza Hotel it’s Buckingham Palace.)

So, yes, they snipe and bicker more often than not, and more than once someone ends up pushed into a mud puddle (or a duck pond, or a pile of horse manure, or off a short bridge into a creek).

But all in all? It’s not such a bad way to grow up.

 

ii.

Arthur’s just started his first year at Eton, and it’s made him even more insufferable than usual.

Hunith and Ygraine offered to send Merlin to Eton, too, but he couldn’t stand the thought of a whole school of Arthurs. Plus, after sharing a tutor for so long, he was more than ready to never hear Arthur butcher a recitation of French poetry gain. And he doesn’t much fancy looking like a knob in a top hat, either.

The point is, the idea of Eton doesn’t suit Merlin at all, so he ends up going to a very good state school in London. Which is how he ends up in the private royal family library on a Wednesday afternoon—which has always been open to him, despite Merlin not technically being a member of the family in question—looking for a book on tectonic plates.

Why Arthur shows up about five minutes into Merlin’s quest, then proceeds to sit down across from him while Merlin tries very hard to concentrate on taking notes, he doesn’t actually explain. He does find plenty else to say, however.

“…and Leon and Percival are on the rugby team with me.”

“Yes, please do keep telling me all the fascinating stories about Eton,” Merlin says in a tone so sarcastic even Arthur the Thick of Skull ought to be able to pick up on it. “I’m really so enthralled.”

Arthur snorts with what sounds a bit like poorly masked insecurity, but is probably just arseholishness. “All right,” he says, knocking Merlin's legs off the table and then raising his hands in a gesture of innocence when Merlin glares. “How’s your _state_ school, then?”

“Really great, actually," Merlin says, putting his feet back up and giving Arthur a good kick in the process. “My friend Will is coming over later to study for our geology exam.”

“Oh, you do _exams_ there? I thought they just gave out marks based on who wears the coolest Spider-man shirt.”

(Clearly, the Merlin-goes-to-a-school-that-doesn’t-require-uniforms thing is still rankling him.)

“No, we’re actually graded on how well we do on tests and things. Sorry, is that too confusing for you? It’s very different from your system of marks based on whether or not your great-great-grandfather was the Grand Poobah of Upper Tinkerton-upon-Thames.”

“Don’t you worry, Merlin,” Arthur says, magnanimous. “When I’m king, I’d be happy to make you the Grand Poobah of Upper Tinkerton-upon-Thames. I even know of just the right hat you can wear to look the part.”

“You are _not_ getting that thing on me again.”

“Or what?” Arthur smirks. “You’ll smother me with its feathers?”

“No, or I’ll pants you on a live TV broadcast. Again.”

That shuts Arthur up for a while. At least, a given quantity of “a while” that ends up meaning “about five minutes,” before he’s right back to talking about his dumb school again, and Merlin is right back to making vague and grumpy noises in the hopes that Arthur will leave.

“We had a winter formal last weekend, and I took Sophia.”

“Who?”

“The Duchess of Cambridge! Honestly, Merlin, don’t you pay any attention at all?”

“To you? Not really. Anyway, aren’t all you aristocrats related somehow? I bet you just went on a date with your cousin.”

Arthur colors. “Did not.”

“Did too. It’s not surprising, really. I mean, you’re the product of generations of inbreeding, so it makes sense you’d end up snogging a relative.” Merlin taps his pencil against his chin thoughtfully, as though the whole of Arthur’s personality is suddenly making sense to him.

For a moment, Arthur looks like he’s wavering between his temper and his desire to appear far above all of Merlin’s insults, but then he rolls his eyes and changes tack.

“At least I _have_ snogged someone, _Mer_ lin. Have _you_ ever kissed a girl?”

Merlin looks back down at his notebook.

“No,” he says honestly. His feels his face heat a little, which is unexpected, because he honestly doesn’t feel too worried about it. There’s still plenty of time, after all; he’s only twelve. Maybe it’s just that he’s never really talked about— _kissing_ , and whatnot, with _Arthur,_ and for whatever reason he really, really doesn’t want to.

“No? Not even your new friend, _Freya_?” Merlin immediately dislikes the way Arthur says her name, drawing out the _e_.

“No,” he says shortly. He wills his cheeks to go back to their normal color.

“I bet you don’t even know _how_ to kiss a girl! Do you need me to demonstrate?”

 _That_ question chases the flush right off Merlin’s face.

He puts down his book and looks at Arthur suspiciously. What’s his angle?

Okay, so maybe it’s obvious—he’s taking entirely too much delight in this newfound way to embarrass Merlin, and milking it for all it’s worth. Merlin searches Arthur’s face for something, reassurance maybe—which is ridiculous, because it’s not like Arthur _wants_ Merlin to be assured. He just wants to freak him out as much as possible. Arthur lifts his chin, looking cocky as ever, challenging, but there’s also that hint of what Merlin _knows_ can’t _really_ be insecurity, because this is _Arthur_ , and he’s just trying to mess with Merlin as usual, but—

“Okay.”

Arthur looks surprised, and for a moment Merlin is sure he’s going to back down.

He realizes his mistake as soon as Arthur’s expression shifts into determined: Arthur Pendragon has never backed down from anything in thirteen years of life. He leans in and presses his chapped lips to Merlin’s.

Merlin wonders if he ought to move his mouth like they do in movies, but Arthur doesn’t, so he stays perfectly still. He doesn’t quite know what he _expected_ a kiss to feel like, but this…pretty much feels like having someone’s lips pressed against his. It doesn’t unlock any sort of secret sensation; he doesn’t feel fireworks or butterflies or whatever else people say. His heart does pick a little speed, true, but Merlin feels like this is more to do with—well, the weirdness, the _Arthurness_ , than anything inherent in kissing.

As far as _other_ kiss expectations go, it lasts longer and is just as awkward as he thought it might be. But he doesn’t dare say so.

“There,” Arthur says, sitting back. “You’re welcome.”

Merlin snorts. He picks up his pencil again, only fumbling it a little.

“What, do you expect me to send you a thank you note?”

(Ygraine is big into thank you notes. Arthur has to send handwritten personalized letters to everyone who sends him a birthday, Christmas, or “hey, you’re the Prince of Wales, here, have this” gift. Which means Merlin has a vast collection of these incredibly calligraphic and uncharacteristically gracious notes stashed in his sock drawer, thanking him for (early on) gifts his mother picked out for Arthur on Merlin’s behalf and (more recently) gifts Merlin bought for Arthur himself, like “a single sock” and “one blank sheet of paper to use as a diary, so you can fill it up with all your thoughts for the whole year, which shouldn’t be too hard, I’m only sorry I couldn’t find something a bit smaller.”)

Arthur just grins, undiscouraged.

“Well, Freya might end up sending me one. If you’d been left to your own devices, I’m sure you’d end up slobbering all over her.”

“I would _not_.”

“Would too.”

“I’m not even planning on kissing her.”

“Ooh, why not?” Arthur’s drawing out of the _o_ in both _ooh_ and _not_ manages to be even worse than the way he says _Freya_.

This time, Merlin shoves Arthur, who’s all too characteristically leaning back in his chair. Arthur goes sprawling to the ground and Merlin can’t help it: he bursts into laughter. Arthur looks like a very angry tomato. Merlin laughs harder. Arthur scrambles back up and gets Merlin in a headlock, which should really cause Merlin to stop laughing. Merlin does not stop laughing.

He does once Arthur starts administering a particularly aggressive noogie, if only because he suddenly finds he needs his vocal chords for yelling. His efforts to fight Arthur off are even feebler than usual, thanks to his weakened-by-laughter state, so Arthur only lets him go once he’s satisfied that Merlin has “learned his lesson,” whatever that means.

It turns out to be just in time. As soon as Arthur has plopped back into his own chair they hear the low rumbling thunder of footsteps from the direction of the ceiling: the unmistakable sound of a palace tour group. The palace is closed to visitors while the king and queen are in residence, but Arthur—as Merlin is only too pleased to remind him as frequently as possible—doesn’t count, so even though Uther and Ygraine (and Hunith, of course) are in Wales at the moment, the flow of tourists continues unabated. They’ve been reprimanded before for making too much noise during the tours; if the visitors had heard Merlin’s yelling, they might well have thought someone was being murdered right in the seat of the British monarchy. Again.

“I should really talk to Geoffrey,” Merlin says, still unwilling to let this Arthur-falling-down issue go, “and get him to reroute tours through here, then they all could’ve seen this too. That’s front-page stuff there: _Royal Arse Falls On His Royal Arse_. I bet I could make a mint if I sold this story to the _Daily Mail_.”

Disappointingly, Arthur totally fails to get riled up again. Instead he gets _that face_ , the one that means he has an idea, which, based on historical precedent, is a frightening thing at best and potentially fatal at worst.

 

It’s actually not that bad.

Sure, it starts with Arthur leaping off a balcony to frighten a bunch of innocent tourists into thinking they’ve just witnessed the crown prince’s death, but to his credit, he pops up and gives a cheery wave within a few seconds. They stage an argument for the next group, which doesn’t seem to go over as believably—it’s possible that neither of them are the most convincing actors—but the tourists seem delighted anyway, filming the whole thing on their phones and cheering when Merlin and Arthur break out the ceremonial swords and commence to duel. (Merlin’s spontaneous quoting of _The Princess Bride_ garners the biggest moment of applause, which he most certainly is not going to rub into Arthur’s face later. Arthur deserves it, anyway, for bullying him into doing this when he’s supposed to be doing schoolwork.) Arthur pretending to be a wax statue, then revealing himself to absolutely not be, is another big hit.

It all goes a bit south when Merlin, planted in the middle of a tour group, misses his cue to raise his hand when the guide asks if there are any questions. Arthur, hidden behind a nearby pillar, hisses “ _Mer_ lin!” and it startles Merlin so much he goes crashing into a suit of armor. That one falls flat with the tourists, but it’s Arthur’s biggest laugh of the afternoon.

 

iii.

The line for the bathroom is at least forty people long. Maybe funerals make people really need to pee, or maybe it’s just forty people who need to splash water on their face and fix their smeared makeup.

Merlin doesn’t need to do either—although god knows he’s been plenty red and splotchy in recent days—but he does need the bathroom. The program for the service gave him a paper cut. It hurts like hell, but he’s almost embarrassed by it, because it seems like such a petty injury in the midst of a devastating national tragedy.

Merlin has a deep, irrational, Gaius-instilled terror of infection, but he also doesn’t want to wait in the world’s most depressing queue for half an hour in order to rinse his cut. Luckily he knows this place as few other mourners do, so he ducks out of the main reception area and up the stairs, to the well-hidden bathroom with the high ceiling and stained glass windows that he expects to be empty.

So it’s quite a surprise when he pushes open the door right into some solid object.

“Jesus!” Merlin yelps. (He means it both in response to the shock and the pain of his now-stubbed toe, which is possibly an even pettier injury than the paper cut.) He hears someone hitch their breath and realizes the _some solid object_ he just slammed a door into is actually a person. He looks up.

It’s Arthur. Of course it is.

Merlin immediately feels uncomfortable, because the absolute last thing he wanted to do was to run into Arthur, and then he feels bad for feeling uncomfortable about being around Arthur, because he probably shouldn't be worried about his own feelings right now, when they're at Arthur’s mum's funeral.

Christ.

“Sorry,” Merlin says, then feels he should clarify. “For banging the door into you. And, um. For your mum. I’m sorry.”

Arthur doesn’t answer. He presses the back of his hand to his cheek, a quick, sharp gesture. It sounds like he’s sniffling, and then Merlin notices his eyes are red, and it comes over him with a sudden dread that Arthur probably came in here to have a private cry, and here Merlin is, fucking everything up. Again.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Merlin says, fumbling for the doorknob. “I’ll just…”

He trails off, at a loss in the face of Arthur’s total nonresponse—to getting hit by a door, to Merlin’s apology, to Merlin’s sudden presence or proposed absence. Arthur’s not even trying to hide the fact that he’s crying, which is what makes this whole thing seem so extra serious and awful—which of course it _is_ , what a stupid thought, his _mother_ is _dead_ , but.

Merlin has caught Arthur in moments of unexpected vulnerability before, as is all but unavoidable when you share a home with someone for eight years, even if that home has nearly eight hundred rooms. Every time, though, Arthur would try to cover up, to deflect, to lash out, _something_. Never…this. Openly weeping, not seeming to care or even notice Merlin watching him.

They haven’t actually talked since Ygraine died a week ago. Merlin’s barely even seen Arthur, who as far as he can tell has been kept sequestered away by Uther’s people. The few times he has seen him, he’s been surrounded by administrative staff and media experts and other members of Uther’s household whose official functions Merlin has never quite worked out. And even then, just brief flashes: Arthur next to his father at a press conference, wearing an impeccably tailored black suit, posture as perfectly straight as ever but with his eyes trained permanently on the floor. Arthur being steered down a hallway and through a door by Lord Gorlois’ hand on his back. Gaius saying something to Arthur in the church, and Arthur not responding.

Merlin had thought—well, he just sort of figured he didn’t have access to Arthur, not in the immediate aftermath, because Merlin’s not _really_ family. And even if he considered that maybe he _could_ reach out to Arthur, if only he made the effort, well—wasn’t he being kind by giving Arthur his space?

But maybe, if he’s honest with himself, Merlin has just been making excuses all week, avoiding Arthur because he doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if it’s his place to say anything at all. Yesterday Hunith said they had to send Uther and Arthur a sympathy card, to add their condolences to the millions pouring in from all over the world. (She had to draft it three times before she managed to produce a letter unstained by tears. She loved Ygraine like a sister, but nobody’s going to write a condolence letter to the queen’s personal assistant.) Merlin couldn’t think of anything to write that didn’t sound trite and insufficient and awful, so he just added his name to his mother’s card.

He desperately wishes someone were here with him now to tell him what to do and/or say, or better yet just say and/or do it themselves. He doesn’t know what the “right thing” is. Is he supposed to respect Arthur’s right to his private grief and leave him to cry in peace, or is it better to try to offer whatever comfort and support he can? Abandonment or intrusion? Either choice feels monstrous.

Usually when he finds himself in a _What Would X Do?_ -type situation, Merlin tries to imagine Gaius’ or his mother’s guidance. But now, in this moment, without even meaning to—he thinks of Ygraine.

He remembers a day six months ago. They were all in the south garden when the director of Ygraine’s favorite charity fell suddenly to the ground, convulsing. His wife knelt at his side, apparently well versed in managing seizures, while the rest of them stood around and gaped like the useless, clueless idiots they were. Except Ygraine. The queen barely missed a beat as she knelt down next to the director’s wife and asked, “What can I do to help?”

Maybe when you have no idea what you’re supposed to do, it’s best to just…ask.

“Is it okay if I stay, or do you want to be alone?”

Arthur glances up at him. It’s the briefest flicker before he looks back down at the tile, the first indication he’s given that he even registers Merlin’s presence.

“You can stay,” Arthur says, very quiet, voice scratchy and hoarse. Merlin lets go of the doorknob.

He crosses the room and leans back against the windowsill, next to Arthur. The sun is at the perfect angle to shine through the predominantly yellow-orange stained glass window, where it catches on Arthur’s golden hair, illuminates like a halo. They stand like that for a long time, not saying anything.

When Arthur speaks again his voice is louder, but no less hoarse.

“Everyone’s been taking pictures all day,” he says.

It’s not what Merlin expected. He doesn’t quite know what Arthur means by it, beyond it being the factual truth. He looks sidelong at Arthur, trying to gauge his expression. Arthur continues to stare dead-eyed at the floor.

“They’re all…crying and hugging and putting out flowers,” Arthur continues, slowly. “Everyone. Millions of them. Not just here, either, but all over the Commonwealth, and in America, and—everywhere. ‘International week of mourning,’ I read. ‘Outpouring of grief.’ ‘Something something heartbroken.’”

“Of course they are,” Merlin says comfortingly (he hopes). “Everyone loved your mum.”

“ _I_ loved her,” Arthur says, and his voice breaks. “She was _my_ mum. Not theirs. _Mine_.”

Arthur’s next sob sounds ripped from his throat. Merlin doesn’t even think, just reaches for Arthur’s hand. Arthur grips onto him hard enough to hurt, and Merlin squeezes back, willing the physical pain to lessen the emotional pain, wishing that he could absorb Arthur’s hurt through his skin and grant him some respite.

He can’t begin to imagine what it must be like. To have your mother’s funeral televised live to an international audience of millions. To have a camera trained on your face during every second of the service when you’re trying to say goodbye. To have to bear an entire country of people talking about _their_ loss, staking out their claims to her memory, already working to elevate her above the follies and foibles of mortal men and into something godlike—something that puts her out of reach of her own inescapably human son. Merlin can’t imagine what it’s like to be sixteen and have your mother die.

Hunith often chides Merlin for being “a teenager who thinks he knows everything,” and maybe she’s right, but there is suddenly so much in life that seems to him wholly unfathomable.

So he holds Arthur’s hand as Arthur cries, his knuckles white and jaw clenched, because he may not know exactly what Arthur needs right now but he’s pretty sure both of them crying isn’t it. Eventually Arthur’s sobs quiet into hiccupping tears and then silence, but he doesn’t pull away. Merlin’s never been a fan of extended silences, but he is willing to stand here and say nothing for eternity and beyond, if that’s what Arthur needs.

Arthur doesn’t, it turns out, or at least it seems not, as after a little while longer he says, “I just had the thought that my father’s funeral is going to be televised too, someday. And then I thought, well, what about my funeral, and advancements in technology aside, you know, I think it’ll be mostly the same. So many people are going to show up to my funeral, Merlin. Loads of them.”

“Arthur.” Merlin squeezes Arthur’s hand again, a plea to stop.

Arthur laughs a humorless laugh.

“I mean, if all goes according to plan, I’m going to be king when I die, right? Imagine how many people will act like they care about me as a person. Imagine how many people are going to go around crying at my being dead even though they don’t know me at all, even though I don’t actually _do_ anything for this fucking country, because the monarchy is a fucking anachronism, just a humiliating fucking charade for everyone involved—”

“That’s not true,” Merlin says, even though Will talks all the time about how it absolutely is true, and at this point in his life Merlin is pretty impressionable to whatever Will says about anything.

“Don’t be an idiot, _Mer_ lin,” Arthur says, sounding so close to his normal self but not _quite_ that it makes Merlin want to cry all over again.

Merlin drives on instead, trying to keep the tears at bay, to get it through Arthur’s stupid head that he’s important, _really_ important, not pretend important the way maybe his title and position really honestly are.

“But isn’t it nice to know people care?” Merlin asks, relentless. “Whether they personally know you or not. I think that’s beautiful. And it _is_ about who you are as a person, you can’t say that it’s not, because it definitely is with your mum. People aren’t sad just because she was the queen, they’re sad because she was incredible. She was—warm and wonderful and clever and kind. There’ve been plenty of kings and queens who died without anybody _really_ caring, and there’ve been billions of nobodies who were, you know, loved but not remembered. Your mother gets both. And you will too, but not for a very very long time, okay? You’ll be just as universally beloved. You already are, even. I mean, nobody’s going to care when _I_ die. My mum. Maybe Gaius. I suppose Aithusa.”

Merlin clams up as it occurs to him that this is a wholly inappropriate time for joking self-deprecation. He tenses a little, ready to launch into the sincerest apology of his life, but Arthur snorts a (still pretty snot-filled, but still) _laugh_ and Merlin nearly melts in relief.

“I can’t believe you’d take comfort in being mourned by Aithusa,” Arthur says. “That cat is the worst.”

“She is not the worst, Arthur. She’s really sweet.”

“Every time I see her she hisses and tries to bite me.”

“Well, she can sense you don’t like her.”

“I don’t like her because she tries to bite me!”

“Maybe animals just don’t like you.” (Merlin bites back the comment he’d usually make, _just like all people don’t like you_ , because a) _that_ would certainly be wholly inappropriate in this situation and b) he literally just finished monologuing about how everyone in the world loves Arthur, so it’s not like he has much of a leg to stand on.)

Anyway, Arthur already looks as offended as Merlin has ever seen him.

“That’s ridiculous. My horse loves me. Geraint’s dog likes me fine. In fact, Geraint says I’m her favorite.”

“Val’s dog doesn’t like you.”

“That’s because you turned him against me when you tried to feed him my hamburger and then I had to take it away. Just like you turned Aithusa against me, I’m sure.”

“I’ve done no such thing. I’m not a cat whisperer.”

“Oh, give yourself some credit, Merlin. It’s one of your few skills, you should embrace it. Merlin Emrys, professional cat whisperer. I could help you draw up some business cards if you like.”

“Do you know what _is_ a legitimate profession? Cat wrangler. I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel.”

“Perfect, you can be that, then.”

“Okay,” Merlin agrees. “That can be Plan B. If my actual career doesn’t work out by the time I’m forty or so, then I’m holding you to the business card promise. Barring technological advancements, of course.”

Arthur huffs an acknowledging laugh.

“Wait,” he says, in a tone of surprise, as though something has just occurred to him, “What’s Plan A, then?”

Merlin shrugs. “Haven’t decided yet.”

“Huh,” Arthur says, like he has no idea what that’s like. Which, to be fair, he probably doesn’t. Merlin has a few friends whose parents expect them to follow into the family business—doctors and restaurant owners, mostly—but none are as locked-in as Arthur.

“So…” Arthur says, and Merlin senses things are about to get more serious again. He wonders whether he should still be holding Arthur’s hand. He probably should’ve dropped it when they started talking about cats, right? But Arthur either doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind, because he doesn’t let go.

“What’s your mum doing?” Arthur asks, shifting a little on his feet.

For a second Merlin is confused, thinking Arthur means _right now_ , which—Merlin has no idea. She’s downstairs, probably, at the reception with everybody else. But then he realizes Arthur means _now that the woman she worked for is dead_.

“She’s going back to Ealdor. They offered to keep her on as part of the administrative staff—head of the department, actually—but she said no. I think she—she just really misses your mum. So she’s going home.”

Arthur nods, not looking surprised.

“So when are you leaving, then?” he asks, dully.

“Erm. I’m not, actually. I’m moving into Gaius’ suite so I can finish school here.”

Another flicker of eye contact. As much as Merlin wants very badly to stay, he was hesitant about sticking around in a home that’s not technically his when Gaius suggested it, even though Hunith insisted Ygraine would want him to. So he’s wary about Arthur’s reaction, especially given they’re still not exactly friends, but Arthur doesn’t actually look put off by the news at all. In fact—

“I’m glad,” he says quietly.

Merlin doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so instead he asks, “When do you go back to Eton?"

“Dunno. Guess I’d have to ask Father.” Arthur doesn’t seem that interested in the answer, which Merlin more than understands.

“How is he?” It might be a stupid question—how is _anyone_ when their wife dies?—but Uther is so unreadable, so stone-faced, it’s honestly hard to tell.

Arthur shrugs, an awkward movement due to their continued handholding. He has to notice now, but he gives no outward sign of it.

“He’s…” he says, trails off.

“Yeah.”

He feels Arthur slide to the ground beside him, tugging on his hand. Arthur finally lets go once they’re both sitting on the floor against the wall, arms wrapped around their knees, but it doesn’t feel like a rejection—more like Arthur got what he needed from Merlin’s touch and feels better enough now to manage without. They mostly sit in silence, except for a few rounds of rock-paper-scissors and thumb wrestling to pass the time, until Uther’s harried-looking personal assistant finally manages to root them out.

It’s not quite an eternity and beyond, but Merlin hopes it’s close enough to count.

 

iv.

There used to be a time, Merlin thinks hazily, when he did things. When he went outside and felt fresh air on his face. When he spent a lazy afternoon watching a movie or reading a comic book. When he hung out with Will and listened to him talk about social justice, mountain climbing, or the latest genre of porn he’d discovered. There was a time, deep within the dim recesses of his memory, when Merlin didn’t spend every waking hour of his life writing stupid essays.

That time ended with summer. Now he’s in his last year of sixth form, A-levels looming on the not-so-distant horizon, and he’s barely left his room since school started three weeks ago. Gaius checks on him every once and a while, poking his head in to make sure that Merlin hasn’t spontaneously combusted or forgotten to eat dinner again. So when Merlin hears his bedroom door open a mere half hour after the last check-in, he assumes Gaius is just fussing.

“Go away,” he says, though his words may be slightly muffled by his hands covering his face.

“Is that any way to speak to your future sovereign? I should’ve had you thrown you in the stocks ages ago.”

Merlin turns his chair so quickly he nearly tips over. His eyes verify what his ears are having a hard time believing: Arthur Pendragon, in flesh and blood, on UK soil.

Arthur, in the least surprising move in the history of mankind, decided to take a gap year after finishing at Eton in May. Of course, because he’s the crown prince, he’s hardly allowed to spend that year like his mates, gallivanting across Europe getting drunk on as many trains as possible. Instead he’s spent the past few months touring Africa, and then visited some British-controlled island, maybe Bermuda, and as far as Merlin knew was next meant to go teach schoolchildren in Nicaragua or something. All of which makes his sudden presence in Merlin’s bedroom rather suspect, and causes him to blurt out, “What are you doing here?”

Arthur looks at him like he’s deeply stupid (so nothing’s changed there, at least).

“Dad’s birthday.”

“Shit,” Merlin says, because what with school being his lord and master he’s totally forgotten and hasn’t even sent Uther a card yet. (Being raised by the combined mothering of Ygraine and Hunith has made Merlin extremely punctilious about the sending of cards.) He scrambles around for pen and stationery, but all he comes up with is graph paper.

Arthur, evidently bored by the now several consecutive seconds of not having Merlin’s full attention, kicks the back of his chair.

“C’mon, _Mer_ lin. Get up, I’m hungry.”

Well, Merlin likes that very much. Here’s Arthur, barging into Merlin’s room without so much as a by-your-leave, no proper greeting, no _Hello, Merlin, I haven’t seen or talked to you in a good many months, how have you been_?

To be fair, Merlin hasn’t exactly said any of those things either, but in his defense, he was surprised in the midst of a studying stupor. Arthur has no such excuse besides his usual rudeness. (His private rudeness, that is; his public self is impeccably polite.)

“Go get yourself some food, then,” Merlin says— _grumps_ , more accurately. “Talk to literally anyone, this place is full of people whose job description is to wait on you hand and foot. I’m not one of them.”

“More’s the pity. I’m sure you could use the gainful employment.”

A flood of retorts enter Merlin’s mind, ranging from the familiar biting rejoinders to some ever-incubating new material. But he bites his tongue on them, trying for the old _ignore him and he’ll go away_ technique.

Of course, that’s never once worked on Arthur. And apparently it’s not about to start now.

“Come on, I want to go out and eat. I need you to take me someplace good. I never get to go anywhere.”

Which is ridiculous, because Arthur has been to more countries than Merlin could probably locate on a map. And he’s literally here on a stopover between two different non-Europe continents.

Merlin does sort of see his point, though. Even though they both grew up in the same building, technically, Arthur, unlike Merlin, rarely ever got to pop down the road to grab some chips, make a Tesco run, or even just hang out with friends on the sidewalk. There’s so much security involved, and the risk-bordering-on-guarantee of being recognized, and okay, yeah, Arthur is also far too posh to make a Tesco run anyway. But still.

It’s also possible that Merlin could use a break too. When he closes his eyes, he sees graph paper.

So he takes Arthur (and one plainclothes bodyguard, the absolute minimum they can get away with) to a phenomenal sandwich place near his school. (He and Will and Freya came here nearly every lunch break after it opened last year, until they all ran out of money about two months in. But the nice thing about bringing Arthur is that he always insists on paying, which Merlin considers only fair, given that he pays his taxes.) It’s a busy, mostly student-frequented shop, which hopefully means nobody will be expecting to see royalty—so even if someone does think they recognize Prince Arthur in the crowd, they’re more likely to dismiss the thought.

Arthur decides what he wants from the menu, then sends Merlin to the counter to place their order. It’s practically automatic: Arthur ordering Merlin around as naturally as he breathes, Merlin carrying out those orders without much fuss. Clearly the last four-plus months apart haven’t done much to separate them from old patterns.

Merlin returns with their drinks to find Arthur has staked out two stools at one end of a long counter along the left side of the restaurant. Arthur’s bodyguard leans against the wall a few yards away, reading a newspaper in that bodyguard way Merlin has never been able to figure out, where he simultaneously manages to take in the news and all the movement in the room.

No one seems to be giving Arthur a second look, exactly as Merlin predicted. Not to overstate anything, but he figures this pretty much makes him a genius-slash-hero.

And then he sees _Brian_.

For a crazy moment, Merlin wonders why Arthur’s bodyguard isn’t moving to contain this very real and present threat. Except that Brian _isn’t_ a threat to Arthur, of course, he’s a threat to _Merlin_ , and all of his smugness about being a master prince-smuggler comes crashing rudely down when he realizes he forgot to account for hiding _himself_.

Which is another way of saying that, as of three months ago, Brian is Merlin’s ex-boyfriend.

What on earth was he thinking, bringing Arthur _here_ , where Merlin knows so many frequent customers? Including, yes, his first and only ever boyfriend, now his first and only ever ex. It’s a small world, possibly, except he pretty much just brought this on himself.

“Shit,” Merlin breathes. “Shit. Fuck. Hide.”

Arthur looks at him like he’s crazy.

“ _Hide_ ,” Merlin repeats, scooting his stool left as urgently as it’s possible to scoot, trying to get a nearby pillar between him and Brian.

“I don’t _hide_ , Merlin.” Which is ridiculous, because Arthur hides all the time: from his handlers, from his father, from tourists. He’s hiding right now, with his ridiculous sunglasses that he’s wearing inside like the laddish douchebag he is.

Instead of following Merlin’s example, Arthur follows his line of sight to Brian, which is the exact opposite of what Merlin needs right now. Merlin grabs his sleeve and tugs him forcibly down.

“Please,” he begs in a whisper—the shop is fairly loud and Brian’s a good distance away, but it just feels safer—“just until he’s gone.”

“Would you mind filling me in on who exactly this guy is and why we’re hiding from him?” Arthur asks in an annoyed tone at normal volume. On the bright side, he stays ducked down. They’re facing each other, faces pressed against the counter, probably looking like a couple of idiots, but hopefully, _hopefully_ , nobody’s looking.

“Er,” Merlin says. He tries to check whether Brian has moved while remaining out of sight, not the easiest order of business.

“All clear,” Arthur’s bodyguard says, sounding amused. “He just sat down in a booth facing the opposite way.”

Merlin breathes a sigh of relief and sits up.

“Thanks, Owain,” he says, heartfelt. “Um, would you mind—just keep an eye out if he comes back this way?”

Owain nods, and Merlin relaxes. That settles that, then, except—

“Merlin,” Arthur says. He doesn’t have to repeat his question; it’s unspoken and obvious.

Merlin shrugs, uncomfortable. He pulls a paper menu towards him and starts creasing the edges, something to look at that’s not Arthur.

“ _Merlin_.”

“He’s…some guy I know.”

He shrugs again, helpless, like this will somehow make up for the inadequacy of his response.

Arthur’s looking at him. He can _feel_ Arthur looking at him, eyes practically boring into his skull; he doesn’t dare look over to read Arthur’s expression. He has to physically hold back his wince.

He’s can almost hear the wheels turning in Arthur’s mind, the puzzle pieces coming together to arrive at the one and only immutable conclusion. He feels it coming and wishes he could stop it, but doesn’t know how. He doesn’t even know what “it” is going to shape up to be, exactly—a coming out, yes, but what else? A confession? A confrontation?

He’s avoided the subject for so long he can’t remember how he’d ever planned on coming out to Arthur, _if_ he’d ever planned to. It’s a complacency problem. He’s been too invested in keeping things exactly as they already are, not wanting to rock the boat. He’d tell him someday, he figured, a day that remained ever distant down the road.

The girl at the counter calls out their order number.

Merlin hesitates, half-off his stool, torn between relief and further anxiety. He can see the back of Brian’s head over the booth, worryingly close to the front counter. He chews his lip, trying to visually map the route that keeps him farthest out of Brian’s line of sight.

“Jesus Christ,” Arthur mutters. Before Merlin can respond Arthur is striding to the front, pushing easily through the throng as only a prince can. As Arthur makes his way back Merlin catches a glimpse of the counter girl staring after him, the look on her face a mix of confusion and wonderment.

“Here,” Arthur says brusquely, dropping Merlin’s sandwich on the counter in front of him.

“Thanks,” Merlin murmurs.

They unwrap their food and start eating in blessed silence. With every passing moment Merlin grows more and more hopeful that they’ve officially moved on, that Arthur isn’t even thinking about it anymore, that they can pretend the whole awkward thing never happened and no more questions need be asked.

It doesn’t seem likely, but he’s hopeful.

Merlin has finished his sandwich and started in on a bag of crisps when Arthur finally speaks.

“Whatever happened to that Elena girl?” he asks abruptly. The question catches Merlin completely off guard; it’s certainly not how he’d expected Arthur to lead off.

“Oh. Ah.” Merlin fiddles with the straw of his drink. “We broke up.”

He and Elena had only “dated” for about six months nearly two years ago now, acting as each other’s initially unspoken—but then _very_ spoken—beards. He’s surprised Arthur didn’t already know it ended, but then, Merlin supposes he very deliberately never, ever talks about his love life with Arthur, so how _would_ he know, really?

“I see,” Arthur says in clipped tones, and Merlin grits his teeth, girds his loins—which might not be the appropriate expression, but whatever—and decides to just bite the bullet.

“I’m gay,” he says.

“I know,” Arthur replies.

Merlin stares.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said I know. I’ve known for years.”

“ _Years_?” Merlin repeats. His brain has fuzzed out like one of those old television screens, unable to send or transmit thoughts. Arthur rolls his eyes.

“Yes, Merlin, years. I’m not completely oblivious, you know. I figured it out when we were, oh, I don’t know—fourteenish? Or I suppose I must’ve been fourteen, and you would’ve been thirteen. Thirteenish. So a good half decade then, nearly.”

Merlin splutters. He actually splutters.

“That’s impossible,” he says (splutters). “ _I_ didn’t know I was gay when I was thirteen.”

“Didn’t you?” Arthur looks surprised. “Goodness. Bit slow on the update, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Merlin says. Part of him is busy spluttering and denying the utter absurdity of it all, while another part conducts a mental review of the last five years, recontextualizing their every interaction with the understanding that Arthur _knew_. Especially the years around thirteen and fourteen, when Merlin was in the midst of his rightfully earned, puberty-induced sexuality crisis. And Arthur _knew_.

It’s infuriating.

“And?” Merlin finally manages.

Arthur looks confused.

“And what?”

“And—so—what do you think?”

“What do I think of what?”

 _Confused_ might be underselling it; Arthur looks lost at sea. This just aggravates Merlin further.

“Of me being gay, Arthur.”

Arthur shrugs.

“I don’t care.”

“You _don’t care_?”

“ _Should_ I?”

Merlin doesn’t necessarily have a good answer. He knows he’s probably not being rational, but something about Arthur’s almost aggressively blasé attitude is getting on his last nerve. Why on earth did Merlin spend all that time carefully avoiding pronouns and not inviting his crushes over if Arthur _knew_ and just didn’t say? Would it have been so difficult for him to communicate to Merlin that he knew and didn’t mind, or—and what the hell is up with Arthur simply _not minding_ , anyway?

“I thought you’d care. I thought—remember when it came out that Dumbledore was gay? And you had that whole freakout—”

“Well hang on, that’s not fair, it wasn’t a _freakout_ , and that was years—”

“—and he’s only a _fictional character_ , I’m someone who’s _lived_ with you for the past ten years—”

“Are you seriously _angry_ at me for being all right with you being gay?” Arthur interrupts.

Merlin throws his hands in the air.

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I—I expected you to not take it well and honestly the lack of payoff feels a bit of a letdown.”

“Sorry to have disappointed you with my overly progressive attitude, _Merlin_ ,” Arthur says. He really does sound insulted, even hurt. Which is itself insulting, frankly. Only Arthur, Prince of Wales-but-thinks-himself-King-of-the-entire-known-universe _Arthur_ could take someone else’s coming out and make it all about _him_.

“But it’s not my fault you chose not to tell me until being quite literally backed into a corner by some bloke who I can only assume dumped you—”

“Oh fuck off, Brian and I—”

“Brian?” Arthur makes a face. “What sort of name is _Brian_ , anyway?”

“A normal one, Arthur.”

“See, if you had told me when you should have, I could’ve set you up with guys much better than this _Brian_ idiot—”

“When I _should have_?” Merlin repeats. “First of all, I have perfectly fine taste in men and I hardly need your input in that area. Second, I can’t imagine when this _should have_ should have been, considering you claim to have known before I did, which is honestly such bullsh—wait, hang on. Is _this_ what that stupid kiss was about? Were you, what, trying to make me _realize_?”

Merlin can’t remember when exactly that kiss was—before his gay crisis, definitely, but was it after his “thirteenish” birthday, when Arthur claims to have figured it out? And if it _was_ Arthur’s attempt to clue Merlin in on his own gayness—

“What, do you think you’ve got magic fucking lips or something? Instead of kiss a frog and it’ll turn into a prince, it’s kiss a prince and realize you like dick, apparently. I can’t believe you.”

“Merlin, what on earth are you taking about? What kiss?”

“What k—” Merlin cuts himself off, sick of his own tendency toward disbelieving repetition. “When you kissed me, Arthur. In the library.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You don’t _remember_?” Well, so much for avoiding repetition, then.

“Kissing you? No. When was this, supposedly?”

“It was—I dunno—five years ago? Six?”

From the mystified look on Arthur’s face, Merlin thinks he honestly doesn’t remember—or at least is a good enough actor to get himself out of a tight spot. There’s a tightness in his chest that Merlin can’t quite explain. It’s not like the kiss ever _meant_ anything, but—well, it was his first, and it was with a boy, a prince even, and even if it hadn’t exactly blown Merlin’s mind it still has some importance in his life. When he was in the worst throes of that sexuality crisis—which wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, all things considered, but it’s hard to get out of puberty without at least a few psychological scars—there were times he when remembered that kiss and kept it close to his chest, guarded, like a secret, a talisman, a sign from the universe that he would be okay.

Whereas Arthur, apparently—well. Whatever.

“Let’s just forget it,” Merlin mutters, feeling oddly deflated. “C’mon, we should go before we end up on the cover of the _Telegraph_.”

“I’m not done eating yet,” Arthur protests. He only has about three bites left, but he’s always been the world’s most obnoxiously slow eater, pausing after every bite to take a sip of soda.

“Fine,” Merlin huffs, plopping back down on his stool. “Finish your stupid sandwich.”

“You haven’t even told me how you and this Brian guy broke up,” Arthur says through a mouthful of food—so much for _eat like you’re dining with the king_ —and still managing to pronounce the name _Brian_ with a great deal of inexplicable disdain.

Merlin levels him a sardonic look.

“Yeah, I’m not going to.” He sighs, then adds, against his better judgment, “Let’s just say it didn’t end well. At all.”

“Did he cheat on you?”

“No.”

“Did you cheat on him?”

“What? No!”

“Did you try for a threesome and it all went horribly south?”

Arthur waggles his eyebrows in a way that he probably means to be suggestive but just ends up making him look like Mr. Bean. Merlin laughs despite himself.

“No. It was a foursome, actually.”

Arthur nearly spits out his drink, which Merlin considers (only slightly vindictively) a win.

“Uh, lads,” Owain says, “ten o’clock.”

It takes Merlin a moment to realize Owain is referring to a location and not the time of day. He swivels around and sees Brian.

The restaurant has cleared out a bit since Merlin last looked, and Brian, having just stepped out of his booth, is looking right at them. From the look on his face, it’s clear that he’s recognized the both of them: ex-boyfriend and prince.

Merlin freezes, back in brain-fuzz mode, his rational, decision-making mind like a Magic 8 Ball displaying _ask again later_. It turns out he never has to, though, because Arthur makes a decision for him.

Arthur kisses him.

Merlin doesn’t have a clear idea of how it all happens, only that one moment he’s looking at Brian and the next Arthur’s mouth is pressed against his, Arthur’s hand firmly cupping his jaw, Arthur’s other hand on his _knee_ , for some reason. It’s another long moment before he gets his wits together enough to push Arthur away.

He opens his eyes, which he doesn’t remember closing in the first place, and barely catches the jingle of bells over the shop entrance as Brian makes his exit.

Arthur sits back, looking smugly satisfied.

“What—” Merlin chokes out, his fingers hovering reflexively over his lips, like he’s a heroine in one of those movies who can’t quite believe the hero just _kissed_ her—except that is not remotely what _this_ is, so Merlin wrenches his hand away. “What the hell?”

“You’re welcome,” Arthur says, which registers distractingly as déjà vu.

“For _what_ , exactly?” Merlin splutters. (He’s back to spluttering; can’t help it.)

“For saving you,” Arthur says, like it’s obvious. “That’s really the ultimate revenge you can get on an ex, isn’t it, showing off that you’ve moved on, and especially when it’s with someone as, let’s face it, handsome and princely as me—I just won you the breakup. So: you’re welcome.”

“You can’t just—we’re in _public_ , Arthur—people will say you’re gay!”

“So?” Arthur looks supremely unconcerned, piling up their post-sandwich debris on a tray. “I’m not, so why should I care? I’d be much more worried if people started catching on to actual secrets or—what did Morgana call them?— _hidden sensibilities_. Are you done with these crisps?”

“But—”

“You’re the one who brought up kissing, Merlin, I just figured I’d help you out—”

“I didn’t need your fucking help!” Merlin interrupts, his voice rising to an unidentifiable pitch, even to him.

“I don’t know why you’re so upset,” Arthur says, correspondingly increasing in volume. (At this rate, they very well may end up on the front page of the _Telegraph_.) “I did you a favor. Honestly Merlin, you’re so damn _touchy_ today. Worse than usual. I don’t know why I bother.”

Merlin has put up with Arthur at his worst plenty of times before, but he’d hoped that after four months of separation—

Merlin’s phone buzzes with a text, which is at least sufficient rescue from the infuriating catch-22 of attempting to refute being labeled _touchy_.

It’s a booty call—well, booty text—from Will. (They started hooking up over the summer, in the wake of Merlin’s acrimonious breakup with Brian, when he desperately needed a rebound in some form. That form turned out to be the textbook definition of friends with benefits: full friendship, full-on sex, fully zero romance. Merlin has mostly been ignoring Will’s booty texts since school started, sex being yet another of those things he’s far too busy for, but right now—)

“I’m out of here,” Merlin says, grabbing his coat. His voice shakes every so slightly with anger, probably enough for Arthur to notice, although he wishes he wouldn’t. “You can drive back without me, I’m taking the Tube—”

“Where the hell are you going?” Arthur demands.

“Will’s,” Merlin answers shortly. And because he’s feeling frustrated and mulish and he doesn’t know what else, he adds, “And we’re gonna fuck.”

This time Arthur really does spit out his drink, and on his final sip, too. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, but pays uncharacteristically no attention to the soda that’s dribbled down the front of his shirt.

“You’re going to _what_?” Finally it’s Arthur’s turn to repeat Merlin’s words at a higher pitch.

“Fuck,” Merlin says, vindictive. “Sorry, do you need me to spell it out? When two blokes are really attracted to each other’s bodies in a queer sort of way—”

“WITH WILL???” Arthur says. _Yells_. In a way that if this were a comic book, Merlin’s pretty sure it would be written in all-caps with at least three question marks. He quiets down a little for his next question, but only marginally. “What the _fuck_ , Merlin?”

“What? You don’t wanna hear about it? What happened to that ‘super progressive attitude’ of yours?”

“Well,” Arthur splutters—his turn to do that too, apparently—“That’s before I knew you were sleeping with _Will_ , of all people—”

“So?” Merlin says, half-still vindictive and half-honestly curious, because Arthur seems almost to be getting genuinely angry now. “What the fuck are you so mad about? Why do you care who I sleep with? Or who I date?”

“YOU’RE DATING HIM???”

He’s not, at all, and Merlin doesn’t even know why he said that—maybe it goes back to Arthur’s bizarre scorn for _Brian_ —but he doesn’t say so. Instead he waggles his eyebrows suggestively, grabs his half-eaten bag of crisps, and leaves.

 

It resolves the way most fights do, which is to say: it doesn’t, really.

Merlin scours the Internet for pictures of the kiss, keeping alerts on search items like _prince arthur gay_ and _prince arthur kissing restaurant_. Only one tabloid ends up posting a grainy, shadowy cell phone photo, three days later, and the comments are full of people saying things like _god the media and everyone who believes this shit are all such idiots, it’s just a weird angle, he’s WHISPERING in his EAR, stop trying to make everyone in the world gay._ It’s incredibly annoying. You’re supposed to always be able to count on the Internet to accuse celebrities of being gay, and this _one time_ it lets him down.

By Christmas, Uther has put an end to Arthur’s gap year. He’s supposed to be in Nicaragua teaching children and building houses and some other royal family humanitarian checklist items, and while it turns out he absolutely is doing all of that, he’s also spending his nights partying in a way that “does not represent the monarchy at its best.” (That’s how Gaius puts it, at least. Merlin doesn’t want to know what Uther’s version was.) So Arthur starts at Oxford at the beginning of Hilary term in January, even though first years really aren’t supposed to, but that’s just typical royal exceptionalism, isn’t it? It’s not like there was ever a question of his getting admitted.

Merlin doesn’t see Arthur over Christmas, because he visits his mother in Ealdor and Uther takes the court to Scotland. (For the first time, Merlin realizes that once he’s at university next year he won’t ever have much of a reason to visit the palace, considering the only reason he stuck around after Hunith left was so he could attend school. In the future he’ll travel between uni and Ealdor, and London won’t factor in at all. And even if he does stop by to visit Gaius from time to time, Buckingham won’t be his _home_ anymore. It’s a strange thought.)

The next time he sees Arthur is in late February for Uther’s Ruby Jubilee. (It never fails to impress Merlin how often the British monarchy finds reasons to celebrate itself.) Like most of their interactions, this one involves baseline cordiality, excessive bickering, a brief snarky alliance against Morgana’s awful friend Morgause, an argument, a spare moment of genuine fun, and neither one seeking out the other to say goodbye when the time comes. They don’t reference their last meeting. Merlin suspects they probably never will. Arthur doesn’t ask about his love life, even when Merlin unthinkingly mentions Will’s name in an anecdote, and Merlin returns the favor by not bringing up Arthur’s gap year disgrace.

After that, things between them basically return to normal. They fall almost too easily back into familiar old patterns, picking up right where they left off but with the nastier bits swept unmentioned under the rug. In April Arthur drags him to a concert after Leon cancels, which, despite Merlin’s protests that he needs to _study_ , dammit, is actually pretty incredible, especially when they get invited backstage. In late June Merlin is surprised to see a photo online that purports to show Arthur gadding about London that very morning—which is how he discovers Arthur has been home for a week without Merlin knowing. (Okay, so maybe Gaius has a point, re: Merlin needing to spend more time _outside_ his bedroom.)

He even attends a few of Arthur’s polo matches over the summer to cheer him on. (Merlin has a weirdly perverse love for spectating polo, mostly due to the free booze in the royal box and the bitchy comments aristocrats like to make about their rivals’ horses.) On the morning he’s due to receive his A-level results, as he’s waiting in the doctor’s office—having scheduled as many appointments for the day as possible in order to keep himself distracted—an hour-long special titled “The Student Prince” comes on TV, full of shots of Arthur punting beneath Magdalen Bridge and flipping through books in the Bodleian. Merlin knows perfectly well that Arthur would take the piss out of everything from the music choices to the David Attenborough-esque narration if he ever bothered to watch it himself, but he finds the fluffiness of the piece and the familiar sound of Arthur’s public relations voice oddly soothing.

Through some hilarious twist of fate, after having spent the entirety of secondary school doing his best to stay well away from Arthur’s royal shadow, Merlin ends up following him to uni. They’re in different colleges, at least, and Oxford’s a busy town, so he doesn’t expect to run into Arthur too often.

 

v.

He’s been at Oxford a month when he runs headlong into Arthur and crashes to the ground.

“ _Christ_ , Merlin,” says a familiar voice from somewhere far above him.

Merlin’s books are everywhere, as are Gwen’s, because he’d offered to hold them while she rooted around in her bag for her phone—a distracted series of circumstances that in retrospect resulted in this little disaster.

“You never change, do you?” Arthur continues, longsuffering, as Merlin scrambles around on his hands and (probably now bruised) knees to collect his stuff.

“Oh, hi Arthur,” Merlin says. “Do you think you could get your abnormally large feet off my notebook, please?”

Arthur does, then kicks it a few feet across the grass. Merlin scowls, grabs it, and straightens up.

“Don’t you ever watch where you're going?” says Arthur, grinning, because apparently he cannot possibly let this go.

“Not when I have the chance to run into you,” Merlin shoots back. “I live in anticipation of the day I finally succeed in giving you a concussion. Anyway,” he says to Val, another of Arthur’s bodyguards, “isn't it your job to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen?”

Val grins.

“I saw you coming. I just wanted to see how it played out.”

“Arthur could have you thrown in the stocks for that. I have it on good authority.”

“Shut up, Merlin. Where are your manners?”

Arthur gestures to Gwen, who Merlin had sort of forgotten was present. Gwen, who Merlin knows to be a sensible and no-nonsense kind of girl, looks like she’s just been struck by a train.

“Oh, right. Arthur, this is Gwen. Gwen, His Royal Pratface, Prince Arthur. Artie for short. Artie the Annoying, first of his name. Please do call him that, I’m really hoping it catches on.”

“Please pay no attention to Merlin. My going theory has long been that he was dropped on his head as an infant, possibly repeatedly. Pleased to meet you…Guinevere.”

Arthur is suddenly all charm, stooping to kiss Gwen on the hand; she giggles. Merlin doesn't see why it's so great when _he_ does it.

“Merlin never told me he knew you!”

The look she sends him is positively accusatory. Merlin responds with a helpless shrug. He has a…complicated relationship with the whole _yeah, I grew up in Buckingham Palace and sometimes saw King Uther in the loo_ thing. On the one hand, it’s a nice conversation starter and rather central to the story of his life thus far; on the other, for most of the people he meets, that tidbit of information seems to overshadow everything else about him.

Arthur gives him a different look—appraising, maybe.

“Yes, he’s very modest, our Merlin.”

“More like deeply ashamed. Yeah, my mum was—” Merlin stutters, comes up short, because he’s this is the serious answer part, and he’s never quite gotten comfortable with bringing up Arthur’s mum around him.

“Was my mother’s personal secretary,” Arthur finishes for him smoothly. “Honestly, Merlin, is your mind going already? And so young, too.”

“This is hardly the time for your envy of my youth and vitality, Arthur. What are you doing here, anyway? This isn’t your college. Have you decided to stalk me to school when I’ve only just escaped?"

“Sorry to disappoint. I’m here for the reopening of the renovated Hall. As you well ought to know, my illustrious ancestor built it in the first place, five hundred years ago exactly.”

“Built it himself, did he? Came down here with the hammer and nails and made a day of it?”

“Well, I’m sure you would’ve preferred him to show up with a hammer and sickle.”

“You know me so well. What is it they want you to do, then—lay a cornerstone? Cut a big ceremonial ribbon? Something else that lets you simulate actual physical labor for a fun lark?”

(At the very edge of his peripheral vision, Merlin notices that Gwen looks rather alarmed, like she’s concerned Arthur might indeed have Merlin thrown in the stocks. But this whole exchange is their own twisted version of friendly and jocular—by Arthur and Merlin standards, they’re practically hugging.)

“I just came from giving a talk, actually.”

Merlin raises both eyebrows. “Really? They asked you to speak? What could you possibly have to say?”

“Don't be ridiculous, Merlin, I’m very wise. Much more so than you, obviously, but then, I’ve had much more schooling.”

“Oh yes, you've survived two terms of university without being given the boot, clearly you're a genius,” Merlin says dryly.

“Like they'd ever kick me out,” Arthur says, which Merlin thinks just reinforces his own point. “Come on, then, I’ve just escaped from Laurel.”

“Who?”

“My handler.”

“What happened to Alice?”

“Oh, she didn't last long.”

“I wonder why. Could it be the same reason all the others have quit?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about. Anyway, I’ve given her the slip and I want to grab a pint. I’d ask if you know any good pubs in this area, but you're Merlin, so I imagine you've spent the past five weeks getting a head start on your reading or something.”

Merlin scowls. “As a matter of fact, there's one just around the corner. If your royal arse can stand to sit in the same chairs as us mere mortals, that is...”

“Wonderful. And will the lady be accompanying us?”

“Yes!” Gwen says, without a split second’s hesitation.

“We have lecture!”

“We can skip it!”

“Gwen!”

She has a wild look in her eyes that Merlin’s never seen before. It worries him a little. He wonders if he’s going to have to remind Gwen that she has a boyfriend. (She and Lance started dating literally the first day of orientation. And even though that was just over a month ago, Merlin’s already pretty sure that they’re going to be engaged by graduation and have a couple of sickeningly sweet babies within the next half-decade.)

“Yes,” Arthur agrees, looking far too delighted at this turn of events, the gleam in his eye that he gets whenever someone sides with him over Merlin. “Don't be such a tightass, Merlin. Come on.”

“But you—”

“Shut up, you're coming. Gwen, grab his other arm, I’ve got this one. C’mon, hup, two, three, four, left, right, left—”

Together the annoying presence in his life that masquerades as the Prince of Wales and Merlin’s closest and apparently giggliest friend at uni frog-march him across the quad.

(Merlin thinks back to the handful of times he’s gotten drunk with Arthur since they were teenagers first experimenting with beer, and knows this is going to be a long night.)

They wind up getting sushi first, because Arthur is equally insistent about his hunger and his desire for something other than pub food, and because he specializes in assuming he’ll get his way to the extent that he always seems caught off-guard whenever someone pushes back. Merlin is generally happy to be that person, but right now he just can’t work himself to it—and besides, sushi sounds pretty good. As soon as they’ve sat down Arthur launches into his repertoire of embarrassing Merlin stories. It’s all Merlin can do to defend himself and work in a couple of embarrassing Arthur stories in retaliation, while Gwen giggles so hard she snorts soda out of her nose three separate times.

After they’ve finished Gwen remembers that it’s pub quiz night at their college, and Arthur makes the unilateral decision that they have to go there instead of hitting up a proper pub. (Merlin doesn’t protest that either.)

“Oh my god,” Gwen squeaks, grabbing Merlin’s arm as they enter, “everyone’s staring at us, aren’t they?”

 _Everyone_ might be a bit of an overstatement, but the presence of Arthur is definitely attracting them some attention. Honestly, Merlin might not have noticed it if Gwen hadn’t pointed it out—chalk it up to extensive experience going places in Arthur’s company.

They manage to find some of their friends, including Lance, already formed into a team and happy to welcome new members. They’re all a little wide-eyed as Arthur reaches across the table to shake hands, but within the first ten minutes of hanging out and talking (and Arthur telling another embarrassing Merlin story or two, damn him) everyone seems relaxed and at ease. Merlin can’t deny Arthur’s disarming charm, his skill at making people feel comfortable in his presence, his almost unbelievable ability to paper right over any potential awkwardness or stilted behavior. By the time the quiz actually starts, Merlin’s pretty sure most of them have forgotten that Arthur is the Prince of Wales at all.

The quiz goes the way most pub quizzes do, which is to say there’s a lot of yelling, a lot of laughter, a lot of drinking, a lot of loud arguing, and a lot of wholly ineffectual shushing. They unanimously elect Gwen as scribe after she demonstrates her flawless handwriting. (Arthur’s is actually _too fancy_ to be legible to anyone but Merlin, fluent in Arthurese from years of thank-you cards.) Merlin does very well at the Fantasy Literature category, for which Arthur mocks him, until he bombs a fairly easy question about the Nazgûl—insisting on the correctness of his deep Tolkien knowledge even over the uncertain protests of teammates who’ve only seen the movies—for which Arthur mocks him even more.

Merlin gets his revenge with the British Monarchy category, which Arthur turns out to be disastrously terrible at. Question after question, the sky-high hopes of their team are dashed as Arthur reveals himself to be completely clueless about his own family history.

(“Who was the Sailor King, Arthur?” Merlin yells as teammates pound on the table and shout their support—none quite having the balls to directly confront Arthur like Merlin but none lagging too far behind, either.

“I don’t know! George something?”

“For fuck’s sake, we are talking about _your_ great-great-great—”

“And what the fuck do _you_ know about _your_ great-great-great-whatever-grandfather?” Arthur bellows, not necessarily because he’s reached bellow-worthy levels of anger but because at this point the JCR is just that loud.

“WELL MINE DIDN’T START ANY WARS, SO WHO THE FUCK CARES???”)

“I can’t believe you,” Gwen says after they’ve secured their respectable middle-of-the-pack loss and Arthur’s at the bar ordering another round. She’s had enough beer that she’s snuggled comfortably into Merlin’s side, but he knows that doesn’t preclude a dressing-down. He’d hoped he was off the hook for this, but clearly he thought too soon. She pokes him hard in the side and he winces, less from pain than from anticipation of what’s coming.

“You just let me prattle on like an _idiot_ for the past _month_ on all those occasions when I’d be like”—she adopts a breathy tone to imitate her past self, which isn’t accurate in the least and makes Merlin struggle to keep a serious face—“ _oh, I wonder if we’ll see Prince Arthur around! Do you think we’ll ever get to meet him, Merlin?_ And the time I thought I had a sighting at G&D’s and I rushed over to tell you! And you never _once_ thought to mention that you were _friends_ with him? You owe me brunch, Merlin Emrys.” She pokes him in the side again, less hard.

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” he says, meaning it—even despite his struggles not to laugh, which Gwen luckily doesn’t seem to be at an angle to pick up on—and not contesting the brunch claim. “But me and Arthur are not actually friends, technically. We’re”—he struggles to find the right word to describe their relationship, comes up empty as he ever has on previous attempts—“We just know each other, that’s all.”

Gwen levels him an _are you shitting me_ look.

“What the hell gives you that idea?” she says, sleepy but no less forceful for it.

Merlin blinks. He thinks he actually does a double take, although without being able to see his own expression he can’t quite be sure.

He and Arthur have _never_ been friends. That’s been the defining phrase of their relationship— _not friends_ —ever since the first day they met, and they’ve done a solid job of bearing it out every day since.

Haven’t they?

(Merlin can’t remember anyone questioning them on the issue since Ygraine died, really. She never stopped wishing they’d get along better, always shaking her head at their arguments and saying things like, “It wouldn’t be the end of the world to admit you like each other, boys.” At the time, Merlin thought she was crazy. Now—)

Loud chanting from across the room derails Merlin’s train of thought. He turns in his chair to see that Mordred has apparently challenged Arthur to a shots competition, and Arthur has accepted with gusto.

“This can’t end well,” he mutters.

It ends with a very drunk Arthur needing a place to crash, because there’s no way he’s getting back to Magdalen in this state. Merlin gets under Arthur’s left arm and Lance gets under his right, and together they support him all the way to Merlin’s room. It is, Merlin thinks wryly, a rather different take on what Arthur and Gwen did to _him_ earlier in the day. Arthur isn’t complete dead weight, but he doesn’t make it easy, either, between the loud and random outbursts of song and an urgent need he keeps expressing to get some chicken wings, and not just _any_ chicken wings, he knows of this really good place in Edinburgh—

Eventually they manage to deposit him on Merlin’s bed, where he promptly tips over.

Merlin walks Lance back to the door.

“Sorry,” he says softly, leaning against the doorframe. “Thanks for helping.”

“Different side of him than you usually see on the telly, eh?”

“He’s not usually like this, I swear,” Merlin says, because he has some sort of inexplicable gut instinct to defend Arthur that he can only blame on Stockholm Syndrome. “I mean, sometimes, obviously, he has a bit too much to drink, but he’s also—you know, he’s really smart and very funny actually, and he’s not actually as much of a prat as I tend to say he is—”

(Merlin wonders if he might’ve had a bit too much to drink too.)

“It’s okay,” Lance says, reaching out to clasp Merlin’s shoulder. “We all get like that sometimes, I’m not judging. He seems like a great guy.”

Merlin relaxes. He feels silly for have gotten defensive at all: for one thing, Arthur _is_ being a bit of a drunken idiot, and for another, Lance is probably the least judgmental person he knows (yet another thing that makes him so perfect for Gwen).

When Merlin turns around again he discovers that Arthur, like the prince he very much is, has managed to draw his legs up fully onto the bed and thus claim it for England. So apparently that is that. (He’s even toed off his shoes, which would be a nicely considerate gesture except that Merlin can’t help but feel that if he’s still capable of such dexterity he might have helped them out a bit more on the stairs.)

Luckily Merlin acquired a fold-up mattress (secondhand from the curb, but still) two weeks ago when Will came to visit and complain about what he termed the Oxbridge-industrial complex. When he unfolds it, grabs a quilt from his chair, and steals a pillow from Arthur, it’s almost comfortable.

“Merlin,” Arthur mumbles.

“What,” Merlin says, annoyed, pulling his quilt further up around his neck.

“Merlin.” Merlin ignores him. “Merlin, Merlin.”

Arthur stretches out his arm, groping blindly in the dark somewhere above Merlin’s head.

“Merlin, s’ _important_ ,” Arthur says, a hoarse whisper.

“What?”

Merlin sits up, wondering if it really is something serious, like maybe Arthur’s going to be sick or is having some sort of personal crisis about his drinking or the extent to which he makes fun of Merlin. Arthur’s hand finds Merlin’s neck and settles there, heavy and warm. Merlin can only dimly make out his face in the dark; Arthur’s eyes are closed.

“You’re my best friend, Merlin,” Arthur slurs.

Forget brunch; Merlin probably owes Gwen a really nice dinner.

The obvious candidate for the apparently coveted position of Merlin’s best friend is Will. Merlin has probably referred to Will as such in the past without thinking twice about it. But when he _does_ think about it, Will is really more like—Merlin’s brother. Who he used to have sex with. Which sounds bad, obviously, but Merlin doesn’t know how else to put it.

And there’s Gwen, who Merlin has only known for a month, granted. But he already feels incredibly close to her, and knows she feels the same—after all, you can’t end up accidentally stuck on a roof for six hours with someone you’ve just met and not come down either close friends or bitter enemies. But Gwen is also the type of person whose “best friend” is her boyfriend, relegating everyone else in her life—unintentionally and not the least bit maliciously, but all the same—to a lower tier from which they can never hope to rise.

Merlin doesn’t think he flatters himself by considering himself fairly popular. He has many good friends, _close_ friends, both here and back in London, even a handful he’s kept up with back in Ealdor. But if anybody’s in contention for the top spot, it has to be Will or Gwen or—well.

He loves Arthur. He’s certainly never _told_ him that, but he does love Arthur in a way it’s nearly impossible not to love someone with whom you’ve spent so much time, shared so many memories, developed such a strong connection. He would take a bullet for Arthur, if it came to it, or vote for Arthur if monarchs were people you voted for. But their relationship has always existed more through circumstance than effort; they’ve never really attempted to hang out without being thrown together. They go long stretches of weeks and months without communicating, and when they see each other again they don’t exactly start hugging and catching up. How can that possibly be friendship?

And what about Arthur, anyway? If Merlin fancies himself well liked, he knows it’s nothing to Arthur’s popularity. Even if you eliminate all the hangers-on and barely-knowns and whoever the hell Arthur partied with in Nicaragua, there’s still a sizeable group of people Merlin knows Arthur considers close friends. But maybe, like Merlin, he has a ton of close friends and no obvious best friend—hell, maybe it’s difficult to even _have_ a best friend when you’re the Prince of Wales, because who on earth could fully understand what that’s like?

Not Merlin. But—he could begin to.

There’s a lot of things, he thinks, that only he and Arthur share. Like growing up in a palace together, to name the obvious. (None of the other staffers with children lived on-site, and Morgana—well, Morgana had her own thing going on.) Like being the only two beneficiaries of the combined parenting of Hunith and Ygraine, in all their warmth and humor and firmness and love. And like being the only two people to know what happened to the twenty-six pound turkey Uther was meant to carve on Christmas Day 2010.

Merlin can’t think of a single other relationship of his that’s anything like what he has with Arthur. There’s an ease between them, even when they’re not really getting along, a comfort and familiarity that comes simply from being in each other’s presence. They have their own language, too, with its own rhythm and references to things only they understand. And whenever things get really rough—like with Ygraine’s death, or the whole business of Merlin’s dad’s reappearance a few years back—as strange as it may seem, they always seem to gravitate towards each other rather than their “actual friends.”

For all the complexity between them, Merlin thinks that maybe no one understands him like Arthur does, and vice versa.

“Yeah,” Merlin realizes, feeling himself smile, “I guess you’re my best friend too.”

Arthur snores.

Okay, so they’re not _normal_ friends, by any means. And that probably won’t change. Merlin doesn’t exactly envision the two of them going out of their way to spend time with each other any more now than they did before, especially now that they’re just occupying the same city rather than the same building. So they’re friends, _best friends_ even, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to start hanging out.

 

They start hanging out.

The expression on Merlin’s hallmate’s face as Arthur sneaks out of Merlin’s bedroom the next morning is, in a word, priceless, but by the end of the week he and every other hall resident have gotten used to the comings and goings of the crown prince.

Merlin’s not actually sure how it happens: it just _does_ , somehow. They segue so seamlessly into the sorts of things that proper friends do—eat breakfast in Hall together, spend aimless hours in the other’s room, go out for dinner in a group so large and rowdy Arthur feels obliged to leave a fifty percent tip—that Merlin almost feels weird about how _not_ weird it feels. Arthur has his own college, of course, and Merlin has his, but it doesn’t take too long for their respective friend groups to become so intertwined they form one large nebulous social circle.

The rhythm of their dynamic doesn’t change much, which Merlin supposes is just a testament to how long they’ve really been friends without admitting it. They certainly don’t stop teasing and bickering and even fighting sometimes, but on the whole their “banter”—as Gwen terms it over Arthur’s strenuous protests—softens a bit, turns gentler, more affectionate.

Merlin pretends not to notice Arthur’s soft smile the first time he has a proper look around Merlin’s room and sees, among the photos Merlin has taped up, one of a radiant-looking Ygraine kneeling down with her arms wrapped around the both of them, all three beaming into the camera. (The look on Arthur’s face is more than worth the quickly tiresome comments whenever Merlin brings a new friend or study partner or hookup back to his room— _hang on, is that the QUEEN?_ ) When Hunith’s birthday comes along in late November, Arthur demands to be handed the phone after Merlin and then talks to her for twice as long.

They become each other’s preferred study partners even though they’re pursuing vastly different subjects, grilling each other in preparation for exams and not afraid to heap on the motivational scorn when the other is doing a shitty job. Merlin stakes out his favorite reading spot in the whole city—which just happens to be in Arthur’s college—and Arthur drags Merlin along on his months-long quest to find the best ice cream in town.

As much as Merlin loves his mum, Ealdor gets boring right quick, so Merlin joins Arthur in Scotland for most of the winter hols. They challenge Morgana to a rematch of a snowball fight she won—sneakily, Arthur contends—a decade earlier, and she beats them again, singlehandedly. ( _Sneakily_.)

On a particularly warm day in March, Arthur takes Merlin out for his first punt. Merlin’s always been prone to a bit of seasickness, leading Arthur to experiment with how much he can rock the boat without actually tipping it over. (Merlin eventually pushes Arthur in with his own pole, just like old times.)

During one long break Arthur takes their whole group of friends on a trip to Ibiza. Merlin takes an internship instead, a very important one, crucial to his future job prospects and whatnot, and absolutely does not regret it, so please stop asking. Arthur texts him pictures several times a day: of their friends, of the beach, of a weird duck he found accompanied by a series of alarmed upside-down Spanish question marks. Mainly the pictures are of himself, grinning and sun-tanned and shirtless and usually drinking a cocktail, and followed by a pointed question about how Merlin is enjoying all the lab work. Pretty soon Merlin starts pretending he doesn’t open the texts at all, in the hopes of finally shutting Arthur up. (It doesn’t work and is a total lie, of course; Merlin does look at the pictures, often more than once. Possibly more than is normal or sane or healthy. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a nice view, he rationalizes, even if that view happens to be your shirtless best friend and future king of your country. And Arthur is _sending_ him the pictures, so it’s not like—whatever. This is normal and healthy and sane and Merlin is going to stop thinking about it immediately, probably, or at least pretty soon.)

Merlin spends the week leading up to the fifth anniversary of Ygraine’s death flipping over newspapers and magazines everywhere they go, trying to shield Arthur from his mother’s face staring out at him under headlines like _Five Years On: A Nation Remembers_ and _Our Queen, Our Mum, Our Girl._ (Which isn’t even to speak of the pictures of Uther under headlines like _Stiff Upper Lip: Did the King Even Care?_ ) Merlin knows it’s largely a pointless gesture, that he can hardly shield Arthur from the collective morbid obsession of a nation, but he can’t forget the dull affect of Arthur’s voice or the brightness in his eyes the day he stared unseeingly down at the pattern of the bathroom tile and said, “Everyone’s been taking pictures all day.”

(The truth is there’s a haunted look in Arthur’s eyes that Merlin has never seen go entirely away for the last five years. None of their other friends notice, not even those that Arthur knew before uni, but Merlin has grown particularly adept at sighting the occasional thousand-yard stare that means Arthur either needs to be left alone or cheered up. It’s a tricky kind of alchemy to crack, and Merlin never stops being surprised when he gets it right.)

When Arthur pulls Merlin aside during lunch and quietly asks him to come down to London with him for the anniversary memorial service, held by Ygritte’s best-loved charity, Merlin agrees instantly. (He doesn’t mention the important tutorial he has the next day. When he calls to reschedule and his tutor tells him—disapproval dripping from every syllable—that this could have a major impact on his grade, Merlin doesn’t care an inch. The tutor ends up trashing Merlin’s paper, which Merlin really did crap out last minute on the train back from London. He cares even less.) At the dedication he stands next to Gaius and never takes his eyes off Arthur. He really wishes he could hold his hand again but Arthur is in composed media mode, head bowed and hands folded neatly while cameras flash and snap and record, and even if Arthur still hasn’t learned to care about gay rumors, Merlin knows enough not to risk it.

So he doesn’t, but he wishes he could, he aches with the wishing all day long.

There’s something about being Arthur Pendragon’s friend that Merlin didn’t anticipate. After so many years spent trying to avoid Arthur’s company—and now that they’re closer than they’ve ever been—it just doesn’t feel _enough_ , somehow. And the closer they get the less sufficient it feels, until Arthur seeks Merlin out in the library and it feels like Merlin is letting out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, which is _ridiculous_ , it’s only been a _week_ since they last hung out, but there it is. Somewhere along the way Merlin shifted from annoyance over the times Arthur winds up crashing in Merlin’s bed to regret over the times he doesn’t. You would really think that after all these years Merlin would feel like he’s had enough of Arthur’s company to last him a lifetime, but he _doesn’t_ , and it’s starting to feel like he never will.

A whole group of them go to see the London Philharmonic at the Sheldonian, squishing themselves onto the benches not so much knee-to-knee as thigh-to-thigh. Merlin sits sandwiched between Arthur and Gwen, and for the first fifteen minutes of the concert he’s genuinely worried that Arthur has a fever. He doesn’t know how else to account for the _heat_ radiating between them, the accidental brush of their hands that feels like actual fire. It’s got to be his imagination, Merlin tells himself firmly, because it’s ridiculous to think otherwise. If it _were_ real, it—well, it would have to be the slowest burn in history, wouldn’t it?

The simple truth is that if anything were meant to happen, it would’ve already. It would’ve happened when they were young and fumbling and Merlin was in the midst of his first gay awakening, or when they were hormone-ridden teenagers desperate for the touch of literally anyone, or even that first night at uni when Arthur reached out a hand in the dark and called Merlin’s name. It’s absurd to think that anything new between them could start _now_ , not after all this time. Whatever feelings Merlin suddenly imagines himself to have can’t be anything more but a passing crush, a symptom of the amount of time they spend in each other’s pockets these days, a sure sign that Merlin’s confusing close friendship for something more.

Merlin and Arthur have already seen each other at their respective best and worst and all the things in between a thousand times over. It seems impossible that a look or a moment between them could reveal anything remotely new after all this time. Which is why Merlin does his steadfast best to ignore the deceitful impulses of his body: his weirdly erratic heartbeat whenever Arthur looks at him a particular way, the flush that radiates across his skin when Arthur drops the timbre of his voice, the little voice inside his head that wonders _what if_. And if they look a little too long at each other across a room, if Merlin feels like Arthur’s eyes never stop following him for the entirety of the three months he’s dating Gilli, if _he_ feels slightly nauseous all six months of Arthur and Mithian’s relationship, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything.

It’s not momentum, Merlin tells himself firmly, it’s inertia. This little madness, too, will pass.

 

(vi.)

Somehow, despite his official duties and trips to Spain and the sheer volume of wine he can put away when he really puts his mind to it, Arthur graduates on time, which considering he missed Michelmas term of his first year, turns out to be at the end of Michelmas term during Merlin’s third year, right before the winter hols.

Nobody else in their friend group is leaving, and that combined with the stress of exams and the fact that they’re rapidly getting old, according to Gwen—yes, at the ripe old age of 21/22/23—Arthur’s official going-away party is decidedly low-key. So low-key, in fact, that Arthur himself disappears about an hour and a half into it.

No one Merlin points this out to seems all that concerned about it, so Merlin tries not to be either. Except, fuck it—Arthur’s the goddamn _guest of honor_ at this shindig, casual though it may be, and Merlin, as the one who bought most of the booze and set up the Facebook event and generally wrangled this thing together, thinks the least Arthur could do is _be here_. Especially given that he’s the one who’s leaving, whose future not-there-ness already feels like a vise around Merlin’s chest.

 _????_ Merlin texts.

His phone buzzes almost immediately with a wordless response: a picture of the night sky, stars a distant twinkle.

“What does _that_ mean?” Gwen asks, reading over his shoulder.

“Magdalen tower,” Merlin says, without hesitation. “That motherfucker.”

Gwen and Lance, snuggled together as always, exchange a look that Merlin chooses not to interpret.

It’s bitterly cold outside. Merlin should really just let Arthur freeze to death on the roof all by himself. It would serve him right. In fact, there are several dozen reasons why Merlin would be more than justified in ignoring Arthur’s latest nonsense and just going to bed, and listing those reasons off occupies Merlin’s full attention until he finds himself at the base of Magdalen tower.

Arthur has left the door slightly ajar, as though he knew Merlin would eventually come after him.

“That motherfucker,” Merlin mutters again, under his breath, and starts up the stairs.

The stairs up Magdalen Tower are long, spiral, and above all, terrifyingly steep. The first time Arthur dragged him up there, Hilary term of Merlin's first year, Merlin had sworn would also be the last. As with far too many Arthur-related vows Merlin has taken, it hasn't kept.

Despite the parapets blocking out the wind, the roof somehow feels even colder than the ground. And the slanted surface Arthur is lying on, hands behind his head, might be good for stargazing—but it doesn't fill Merlin with much more confidence than the steep stairs had. He doesn’t know why he bothers, really, except then the breeze ruffles Arthur’s golden hair and Merlin’s breath catches and he does. He does know.

He shoves his hands deep into his pockets. He must have stolen this coat from Arthur at some point, he realizes; he’d never buy anything this nice on his own. Arthur doesn’t look over as Merlin gingerly lies down next to him. Merlin expects him to say something typically snarky, like _It took you long enough_ or _Surprised you didn’t fall down those stairs and break your neck, but I suppose there’s still time_ , but he doesn’t.

“Did you see that room halfway up, with the orange couches?” Merlin asks, instead. “The fuck _is_ that? Who uses it? D’you think it’s one of those secret societies?”

“Please, Merlin,” Arthur says. His voice sounds slightly scratchy but warm, and Merlin knows he knows Arthur far too well when he immediately thinks, _Two beers_. “There would never be a secret society that I, the _Prince_ of _Wales_ , would not be invited into.”

“Well, maybe it’s an anti-monarchist society. Republicans. Maybe they’re plotting your death by guillotine.”

“You’d like that, would you?”

Merlin shrugs. “Seems like a lot of unnecessary fuss when I could just shove you off this tower.”

“At last the truth comes out. You’ve been planning this from the very beginning, haven’t you.”

“Yes. I’ve spent the last thirteen or so years concocting a scheme to lure you to the top of this very tower, using a clever mix of reverse psychology and reverse-reverse psychology. It’s worked like a charm.”

“You treasonous bastard,” Arthur says, betrayed fury slightly marred by an enormous yawn halfway through the word _bastard_. “I could have you thrown in the stocks, you know.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

They look at the stars in companionable silence. The silence is so deep and the stars so resolute that Merlin wonders if the sun will ever rise. The future resumption of day-to-day activity seems irreconcilable with this moment. He wonders whether anyone’s ever going to say anything ever again, or if this is it: the world has finally run out of words.

“I was such a little shit,” Arthur says out of nowhere.

Merlin glances over, eyebrows raised.

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“When we first met.” Merlin experiences a moment of dizzying disorientation, trying to get his mind around the concept. _When we first met_. It’s hard to believe that such an event existed, that there was ever a time in his life when he didn’t already know Arthur as well as he knew himself. “You just wanted to be friends. Remember? And I was awful.”

“You absolutely were,” Merlin agrees wholeheartedly. “Terrible. The shittiest. A proud tradition you’ve kept up to this day.”

Arthur makes a humming noise, not taking the bait. Merlin shifts, feeling thrown off their usual rhythm.

“It wasn’t _all_ your fault,” he admits, when Arthur still doesn’t say anything. “Mum says I hold onto grudges.”

“Oh, you absolutely do. Your mum and I have talked about that at length.”

Merlin frowns. “Is _that_ what that weird text was about?” He digs his phone out of his pocket, scrolls back a few weeks, and reads: “‘Tell Arthur Fiona’s got a new haircut. He’ll know what it means. Love Mum.’ Do you two have some sort of secret code language you use to talk about me?”

“It’s a reference to _Antiques Roadshow_ , actually. Not everything’s about you, _Mer_ lin.”

Merlin huffily puts his phone away. It’s another long moment before Arthur speaks again.

“Do you think that if we’d both been less…” He trails off.

“Shitty?” Merlin supplies. Arthur huffs a laugh, but it’s still not the reaction Merlin was looking for. He seems determined to reach some sort of point.

“Do you think things would’ve turned out different?”

“Different how?” Merlin asks.

“I mean, if we’d been friends from the beginning.”

Merlin thinks.

He casts his mind back to the beginning of everything, probing deep into the recesses of his memory. He thinks about being seven years old, excited and terrified all at once. He thinks about the constant uncertainty he felt his first few months in the palace, never knowing if something was okay to do or touch or breathe on. He thinks about the fights: the petty and the not-so-petty, the affectionate teasing and the times they shot to kill. He thinks about those strange in-between years of adolescence, when everything felt off-kilter, like the whole world might tip sideways at any moment. He thinks about these last few years at Oxford.

He thinks about Arthur.

He thinks about the stupid haircut Arthur got in year five, for which Merlin teased him so mercilessly that Arthur, in revenge, actually replaced Merlin’s shampoo with glue. (He hoped Merlin would have to shave himself bald, but even at ten Merlin had known not to spread the mysteriously sticky and bad-smelling substance that came out of his shampoo bottle through his hair.)

He thinks about Arthur’s laugh when Elyan fell backwards off the pier and into the water of Loch Lomond, how he’d bent over clutching his stomach, gasping for breath, while Percy tried to hoist Elyan back up and Gwaine sang an off-key rendition of _my bonnie lies over the ocean_ , which wasn’t even the right song. Merlin had been in a pissy mood that morning—he doesn’t remember why—but the unadulterated joy in Arthur’s laugh had lifted his spirits right back up, high into the mountains.

He thinks about the casual way Arthur has always stolen food from Merlin’s plate, to the point where Merlin quickly got sick of objecting and just started making little piles of his onions or peanuts or whatever Arthur’s obsessed with and Merlin can handle doing without. He remembers that day in the sushi restaurant with Gwen, the first time she’d met Arthur, when he hadn’t even realized what he was doing until Gwen had given him _a look_ , and he’d looked down at the hill of cucumber he’d already created on Arthur’s plate and found himself inexplicably blushing. (Arthur, to whom the whole process was just as automatic, ate the entire pile of cucumber without ever cottoning on to the exchange between Merlin and Gwen.) Merlin remembers the absurd futility of attempting, only hours later, to insist that the relationship between them wasn’t any sort of relationship at all.

He thinks about the way Arthur’s hair curls at the nape of his neck after he’s just gotten out of a shower. He thinks of the last memory he has of Arthur and Ygraine together, sprawled across the floor playing Yahtzee. He thinks about the warmth of Arthur’s hands through his gloves, the sound of his voice before he’s had his morning coffee, the taste of his lips during that awful kiss in the sandwich shop.

(He thinks about a wedding they both went to last spring, the day before Arthur left on another of those multi-month international humanitarian trips. He remembers standing next to Arthur at the bar, a few drinks in, a lull in the conversation—and then Arthur moved to straighten Merlin’s tie, crowding up in his space, and Merlin became intensely, acutely aware of the Prince of Wales’ eyelashes.

"You’ll be here when I return, yeah?" Arthur said, not looking up, pulling almost idly at the silk around Merlin’s neck. Merlin swallowed, a bob of his adam’s apple.

"Where else would I be?" he asked, hoarse.

"Good man," Arthur said. And he clapped Merlin on the shoulder, moved out of his immediate space, downed the rest of his drink, and went to ask the bride for a dance. And Merlin was left standing there, flexing his fingers, a drowning man in the desert.)

Merlin thinks, would things have been different? Better, even?

He turns his head to face Arthur. Laying down like this, practically nose-to-nose—even this angle, he has seen before.

“Nah,” he says, grinning. Their breath creates a single cloud. Arthur’s eyes flicker all over Merlin’s face, down his neck. They're holding hands; Merlin doesn't know when that happened.

And he realizes this is not a singular moment, despite the heaviness in the air between them, the heat, the extra layer of expectation. There have been moments like this before. If they let this one pass, another will come, and another after that. It’s easy. So easy. Things with them always have been.

“Kiss me, already,” he breathes out, and Arthur _does_.

It doesn’t feel like a first kiss. (Technically, Merlin supposes, it isn’t.) It has none of the hesitancy, none of the awkwardness, none of the second-guessing that has accompanied most of the first kisses Merlin has experienced. It feels, impossibly, like a kiss from a movie where a man comes back after many years of fighting in the war, and finds his lover standing in the shadow of the tree where they had their first kiss, a lifetime ago, and he drops his bag and kisses his lover and thinks, _home_. If their earlier silence hadn’t fixed the stars in place and stopped the sun from coming up, this kiss surely could.

Arthur’s hand curls around the back of Merlin’s neck, and he bites down on Merlin’s lower lip, and Merlin gasps, which is exactly half attributable to how turned on he is and half to the fact that Arthur’s hand beneath the collar of his coat has exposed the back of Merlin’s neck to the frigid night air. Merlin pulls Arthur closer, to the extent that such a thing is possible, drawing in his warmth, entangling their legs. He wants to rip his gloves off with his teeth and feel the flush in Arthur’s cheeks with his bare hands, to reach between them and ruck up Arthur’s jacket, run his fingers along the planes of Arthur’s stomach—but he also wants to not get frostbite. Arthur growls into his mouth, and Merlin knows he feels the same frustration.

Arthur turns his head slightly, and Merlin starts kissing his neck. A distant part of his brain is worried that his tongue is going to stick to Arthur like to a frosty flagpole, but the much closer and louder part of his brain doesn’t care and can’t fathom Arthur’s neck being _right there_ and _not_ kissing it. Except then Arthur’s lips are back on his and that works too. Merlin grasps at the front of Arthur’s coat, and Arthur groans, and Merlin’s ears are practically encased in ice, he’s pretty sure, and he wants _so badly_ to take off all of Arthur’s clothes and taste every inch of him and not being able to do that is so maddening it’s making him a little bit delirious. Like he has heatstroke.

“Okay,” Arthur says, pulling back, panting. He’s pulled far enough away that Merlin can’t easily start kissing him again, and in his absence the cold rushes back in to slap Merlin on the face, the slightest exposure of skin to air like a dagger. “Okay, we—I—this”—Merlin feels he has every right to enjoy the way Arthur can’t seem to form a coherent sentence—“it is _way_ too cold for rooftop sex.”

“Wuss,” Merlin says, as though he’s not the one burrowing into his coat, half-convinced he already has hypothermia.

“Let’s go see whether we can get into the orange room,” Arthur says, clambering to his feet. “That is if you do put out on the four thousandth date.”

“Four thousandth?” Merlin can’t help his grin, despite the chattering of his teeth. “You mean all this time while I’ve been planning your death, we’ve been going on dates?”

“And I’ve been a perfect gentleman the whole time.” Arthur offers his hand to Merlin, gallant. Merlin takes it and allows Arthur to hoist him to his feet.

“Technically, if we’ve been dating all along, you’ve cheated on me loads.”

“So have you.”

“Not as much, though.”

“But you cheated with _Will_. And _fucking Brian_. So we’re even.” (Merlin hasn’t encountered Brian since that day in the shop; he barely remembers the relationship and still doesn’t know what Arthur’s particular beef with Brian is. And to think _Merlin_ gets accused of holding grudges.)

“What about when you dropped that flowerpot on my head? Not very gentlemanly, that.”

“You mean that time I romantically surprised you with flowers?” Arthur quirks an eyebrow, like _you’ll have to try harder than that_.

“And the time the king of Sweden farted and you blamed it on me?”

“Well that was just good diplomacy, especially for a ten-year-old. What a disgusting thing to bring up when we’re about to have sex.” Arthur walks back to the top of the stairs, and Merlin follows close behind.

“When I’m about to murder you, you mean,” he corrects.

“It’s not _my_ fault you’re such cliché, _Mer_ lin. Played the long con, fell in love with the mark. A classic tale. Don’t you watch any movies? You should’ve seen this coming.”

Merlin doesn’t dispute Arthur’s claim about having fallen in love. He grins at Arthur’s back. He crowds close behind him, thinking that if they fall down the stairs, at least he’ll have something soft-ish to land on. He presses his smile into the back of Arthur’s coat. He bites. He kisses. Arthur shivers, maybe not from the cold, and Merlin grins again.

“Ready to make history?” Arthur asks when he finally jimmies open the door to the orange room, and Merlin laughs, and shoves him inside, and kisses him, and thinks, _Yes_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to drop a comment (and/or if you're able, consider dropping some change in my [virtual tip jar](http://ko-fi.com/ladililn)) and make my day. ♥


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